WHITEMARSH — Everyone has a dream date for prom. For some, that dream date may be a high school sweetheart. For others, it could be a celebrity. For Mount St. Joseph Academy senior Carly Monzo, that dream date for her senior prom was a no-brainer: Shaun White.

For those unfamiliar with the exploits of White, he is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding and holds the all-time record for medals in the X Games, including more than a dozen golds in the winter games and a pair of golds in the summer version after taking up skateboarding to compliment his snowboarding skills. The Animal, as he has been called due to what he says is a resemblance to The Muppets character of the same name, is also an occasional actor and a musician, playing in a band called Bad Things.

“He’s so passionate,” said Monzo. “Not only do I love him, his band is awesome..

“They rock. I’ve been listening to their CD on replay for probably four months.”

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Of course, as incredible as it would be to have White come to The Mount’s prom, Monzo did not think it would ever happen.

Still, Monzo saw no harm in at least making an attempt to reach out to White. So, using a camera made by GoPro (which happens to be one of White’s sponsors), Monzo and her friends made a four-minute video asking the Olympic gold medalist to prom, which she edited and posted to the video-sharing website Vimeo.

“I just kind of got inspired,” she said. “I tried to upload it to YouTube but I couldn’t (because of issues with the music), so I ended up putting it on Vimeo. I like that I put it on there because it’s totally different.

“I tweeted at him and I asked my friends to help.”

Monzo said that she thought it would take “millions of people tweeting at him” for the snowboarder to take notice and even if he did notice, the odds were mighty slim for him to actually travel all the way to the Whitemarsh Valley Country Club on Friday night to attend her prom.

Turns out, much to her delight, Monzo thought wrong, although she didn’t know it.

“(School officials) called my name to the front and I thought what could I have possible done for them to address the entire prom,” Monzo explained.

Instead of getting in trouble, though, she was in for the surprise of a lifetime when a curtain dropped and waiting on the other side of that curtain was White, along with his Bad Things bandmates.

“All of my friends were crying for me and I was like ‘Carly, don’t lose it.’”

Once White was revealed, Bad Things played three songs and the pair spent the rest of the night enjoying the festivities, with White being “very gentlemanly.”

“Everything I would expect,” said Monzo.

Still, though, it would seem that there was quite a big step from tweeting White with a link to a Vimeo video and actually getting the snowboarder/skateboarder/actor/musician to actually show up. And, according to Monzo, that entire process was kept very hush-hush.

“My mom didn’t find out until 10 that morning. Literally only like six people knew,” she said. “It couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t a secret because then it would have happened for the wrong reasons.”

While Monzo and the school didn’t find out that White was planning a visit until the last minute, according to the snowboarder, the trip had been planned for quite some time.

“They said they saw the video the day it came out and starting planning it then,” said Monzo.

So, the real question for Monzo would be if she had fun at prom? After all, everyone always says that your senior prom is supposed to a memorable experience.

“It was nutty … it was crazy,” Monzo exclaimed. “I can’t even get over it.”